Never heard her. HONK if you think I am missing something.
NYT: Taylor Swift's 'Folklore' Is No. 1 With a Blockbuster
Debut Week https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/arts/music/taylor-swift-folklore-billboard-chart.html
By Ben Sisario
A new Taylor Swift album usually arrives with a monthslong
marketing
rollout: radio singles, corporate tie-ins, a string of media
appearances--all carefully choreographed to send her to No. 1.
For her latest release, "Folklore," Swift threw out almost her
entire playbook, yet still rocketed to the top with sales
that most
artists can only dream of.
"Folklore," which came out on July 24 with less than 24 hours'
notice, opened at No. 1 on Billboard's latest album chart
with a
whopping 846,000 sales in the United States, according to
Nielsen
Music. That's the third-highest weekly total for any album
in four
years, beaten only by Swift's last two albums: "Reputation"
(1.2
million in 2017) and "Lover" (867,000 a year ago).
By comparison, Drake's "Scorpion," a monster streaming hit,
opened
with the equivalent of 732,000 sales in 2018, while Kendrick
Lamar's
"DAMN." notched 603,000 the year before that.
Selling more than one million copies in a single week--once a
Swift specialty--may no longer be possible in the streaming
era,
but through canny marketing Swift has kept her numbers as
high as
almost anyone can. (One exception: Adele, who had stratospheric
numbers the last time around, and has a new album in the
works.)
"Folklore" may also be one of the last blockbuster releases
to take
full advantage of one of Nielsen and Billboard's most contested
rules, over the so-called bundling of albums--selling a copy
of an
album along with another item, like merchandise or a concert
ticket.
Billboard is set to stop counting most of these deals in
October.
When her album was announced, Swift's website was fully
primed to
deliver her album in an array of deals for items like a $49
cardigan
and a $15 phone stand. In addition, Swift sold 17 physical
versions
of "Folklore"--eight CDs, eight LPs and a cassette tape--that
surely lured large numbers of collectors and fans. Swift's
846,000
sales total is a composite number that includes 615,000
copies sold
as a full album.
Yet Swift's surprise release strategy brought its own
momentum, and
in the days after its release it was a legitimate sensation
online
--as well as a critics' favorite, for the most part--that drew
290 million streams. The "Folklore" single "Cardigan" also
debuted
at No. 1 on the Hot 100.
Swift did manage to avoid one piece of potential competition
in her
opening week. Kanye West, her eternal celebrity nemesis, had
announced a new album, "Donda: With Child," for the same
day, but so
far it has not materialized.
Also this week, Logic's "No Pressure" opened at No. 2 with the
equivalent of 221,000 sales. Juice WRLD's "Legends Never
Die" falls
to No. 3 after two weeks at the top, and another posthumous rap
album, Pop Smoke's "Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon,"
is No. 4.
The "Hamilton" Broadway cast album is No. 5.
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